system, and no prospect, in the event of such relaxation, of increased employment of British shipping in the direction indicated. In fact, the London Shipowners thought the argument was entirely the other way, and would not be convinced to the contrary, whatever relative prosperity they might enjoy. [Sidenote: Real value of the Coasting trade of the United States.] With regard to the Coasting trade, all parties were agreed that the Americans acted selfishly in denying to England the same reciprocity for the coasting trade, which she had unrestrictedly conceded to them. The Shipowners, however, by no means acquiesced in the opinion given by the Board of Trade, that “the value of the American Coasting trade had been greatly overestimated.” They said, and with reason, that it was an error to imagine that because San Francisco formed the limit of the United States’ coasting trade, the entrances and clearances at that port exhibited the entire amount of the trade along the American seaboard. [Sidenote: Magnanimity of England in throwing open her Coasting trade unconditionally not appreciated by the Americans.] It was, indeed, an evasion to say that the American coasting trade, meaning the western coast only, never afforded employment to more than 200,000 tons of American ships. The records of these pages afford proofs to the contrary. All mention of the trade between the ports of the Northern States and those of the Gulf of Mexico is, for some reason or other, suppressed. All the vast and lucrative carrying trade between New York and Boston, New Orleans and Mobile and Charleston, is studiously kept out of view; trades far more valuable than that of San Francisco and of the whole western coast, collectively. The argument, therefore, set up by the Board of Trade, “that the participation of the Californian trade, however desirable, cannot be regarded as a circumstance which could exercise any important influence on the shipping interests of Great Britain,” was altogether unsatisfactory. Magnanimous as it was of the English Legislature to throw open the foreign, as well as the colonial commerce and navigation of the Empire, and the coasting trade afterwards, without imposing any previous conditions, such a liberal policy has, evidently, been unappreciated by the Americans, who seem resolved to monopolise all advantages resulting from their geographical position. FOOTNOTES: [170] See _ante_, vol. ii. _note_, page 312. [171] Timber freights from Quebec rose from 30_s._ per load, the ordinary rate, to 55_s._ Coal freights to Constantinople advanced from 20_l._ to 70_l._ per keel of twenty-one tons four cwt.; and freights from India, which had previously ranged from 50_s._ to 80_s._, ran up as high as 180_s._ per ton.